• Focus and Scope
• Sections
• Peer Review Process
• Publication Frequency
• Open Access Policy
• Archiving
• Publication Ethics Statement
• Journal Sponsorship
• Journal History

Focus and Scope

The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes a human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking. It explores trafficking in its broader context including gender analyses and intersections with labour and migration. The Review offers an outlet and space for dialogue between academics, practitioners and advocates seeking to communicate new ideas and findings to those working for and with trafficked persons.

Each issue relates to an emerging or overlooked theme in the field of human trafficking. The Review’s focus is global in nature, exploring micro and macro levels of anti-trafficking responses and the commonalities, differences, and disconnects in between. The journal contributes to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 5 (Gender Equality), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), among others. 

We welcome submissions from a diverse range of actors, including academics, practitioners, trafficked persons, and advocates. The Anti-Trafficking Review particularly welcomes contributions from practitioners and those with direct experiences and insights to share.

The Anti-Trafficking Review is aimed at a wide readership. It therefore encourages submissions that are in clear, jargon-free English with appropriate but not excessive citation.

Sections

Currently, the journal publishes four types of articles: thematic articles (empirical, conceptual or literature review studies), debates where authors defend or reject a pre-determined proposition (only in some special issues), short articles - blog or op-ed style typically used by service providers and advocates, and book reviews.

Peer Review Process

All articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymised refereeing. Articles are peer reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double-blind process. The editorial team does not guarantee publication of any submissions, even when authors have been encouraged in correspondence to submit an article.

Publication Frequency

The Review currently publishes two Special Issues per year - in April and September. Call for papers are announced twice a year, usually in January (for an issue to be published in April the following year) and July (to be published in September the following year).

Call for papers are available on the Announcements page.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge, as well as practitioner access to new research findings. The journal publishes content licensed under Creative Commons licensing, and does not charge authors APCs. 

As a feminist organisation from the Global South, the journal's publisher, GAATW, believes that knowledge should be as widely and freely accessible as possible - not restricted to people at universities or those who can afford to pay subscription fees. Our limited capacity unfortunately allows us to publish articles only in English, which precludes a large number of people from accessing them. But this only makes our commitment to open access publishing even stronger. Read more about our principles in relation to open access publishing in this blog post for Open Access Week.

Anti-Trafficking Review is included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - an online community-led database of around 12,000 open access journals. DOAJ's mission is to "increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language." View the Review's profile in DOAJ here.  The journal is also a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, which "works to support the transition to a world in which open access becomes the predominant model of publication for scholarly outputs." 

Archiving

CLOCKSS system has permission to ingest, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit. See the information collected and stored by CLOCKSS here. 

Anti-Trafficking Review Publication Ethics Statement

Author Responsibilities

1. Authors are required to give a guarantee that the same article, or an article with substantially the same content, has not been submitted concurrently to a different journal. Authors should submit only original work. Submitted work should not have been published elsewhere in whole or in part unless this is brought to the attention of the editorial team.
2. Authors should fully and accurately cite appropriate sources for facts and ideas that they draw on in their article. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to include any copyrighted material including images or tables in their work.
3. Authors should include any conflicts of interest in a statement in the published paper. Conflict of interest includes any financial or political interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question or create a possible impression of bias in the work - including pertinent sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), or personal relationships.

Reviewer Responsibilities

1. Reviewers must keep information related to the articles confidential, confirming that the entire text of an article (and drafts), will not be shared until its publication, upon which time the final version of the article may be shared freely according to copyright licensing. Reviewers confirm that all details about comments made during the peer review process will remain confidential among the individuals involved and not be divulged to anyone else.
2. Reviewers are responsible for declaring any potential conflict of interest they may have related to the author or subject, which might unduly influence their review. Conflict of interest includes any financial or political interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question or create a possible impression of bias in the work - including pertinent sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), or personal relationships.
3. Reviews should be clear and constructive, based on the paper’s contribution to new knowledge, originality, quality, coherence, clarity and proper application of research methods, full and accurate citations, as well as its relevance to the remit of the journal.
4. Reviewers should affirm that the authors have accurately cited appropriate sources for their work. They are asked to notify the editorial team if they notice any overlap between an authors’ paper and a previously published work.

Editor Responsibilities

1. The editorial team* must keep information related to articles confidential. This includes ensuring that the peer review process is double blind, that reviewers are only sent anonymised articles, and that authors do not receive information that reveals the identities of the reviewers. The editorial team is responsible for maintaining confidentiality of the entire text of an article (and drafts) up to publication. The editorial team must confirm that all details about manuscripts that are rejected for publication, requests for redrafts, and comments made during the peer review and editorial process will remain confidential among the individuals involved in the editorial, review and publications processes.
2. The editorial team has the responsibility of accepting or rejecting an article, as well as the responsibility of notifying authors of any revisions which need to be made to their work prior to publication.
3. The editorial team must review the article for its scholarly content and value. Members of the editorial team must declare any potential conflicts of interest to the editorial team related to particular submissions. The editorial team will work to ensure that submissions from members of the journal’s Editorial Board, editorial team, the publisher’s staff, membership organizations, Board, or Associates receive an objective and unbiased evaluation. Members of the editorial team shall not take part in the review or evaluation of their own submissions. Editorial decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s contribution, originality, coherence, clarity and proper application of research methods as well as its relevance to the remit of the journal.
4. The editorial team is responsible for ensuring that any press releases or other communications issued by the journal reflect the message of the reported article and put it into appropriate context.
5. The editorial team has a responsibility to investigate any suspicions or allegations of misconduct or improper conduct on the part of any person including authors and those involved in the editorial, review and publication processes. Should they find any proof of misconduct, they also have the responsibility to find an appropriate solution.
6. The editorial team encourages and is willing to consider cogent criticisms or corrections required of work published in the Anti-Trafficking Review. Authors of criticised material should be given an appropriate opportunity to respond. The editorial team is responsible for determining an appropriate format for criticism and response. Further, the editorial team is open to receiving submissions that challenge previous work published in the journal.

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*N.B. The editorial team is composed of the Anti-Trafficking Review Editor, and the Communications and Production Officer of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women. For special issues, a guest editor is invited to temporarily work with the editorial team, and is required to abide by the same ethical standards.

Journal Sponsorship

Publisher

Anti-Trafficking Review is published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), an alliance of over 80 NGOs worldwide focused on advancing the human rights of migrants and trafficked persons. The funding for the production of the journal is provided by various private philanthropic foundations, which finance GAATW.

Opinions expressed in articles published in the Anti-Trafficking Review are the views of the authors, and not those of the editorial team, the publisher, the Editorial Board or GAATW funders.

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW)

Journal History

The Anti-Trafficking Review was founded in 2011 with the ambition of providing a dedicated scholarly outlet for the burgeoning academic interest in human trafficking as a discipline in itself. Because trafficking is interconnected with a range of other socioeconomic and political issues, such as migration, labour, development, and organised crime, anti-trafficking scholarship is naturally spread out in journals focusing on sociology, gender studies, women's rights, anthropology, criminology and others. This was and continues to be necessary. Yet, a dedicated journal is an acknowledgment that, as Anne T. Gallagher, the Guest Editor of the inaugural issue pointed out in the first Editorial, "our area of work and study has well and truly moved from the margins to the mainstream of international attention and concern." Another hope was to bring much needed rigour to a field of study where it was largely lacking - as Gallagher observes too. Since its founding in 1994, GAATW had consistently called for anti-trafficking policies to be based on research and evidence and not assumptions, moral panics, and political agendas. We have seen significant progress in this area and are privileged to have made our small contribution.

Guided by these considerations - of making anti-trafficking scholarship freely and broadly accessible, and using research to advocate for better policies for migrants and trafficked persons - we launched the first issue of Anti-Trafficking Review in June 2012. See the Archives section for all past issues. See an interview with some of the women who conceptualised and launched the journal here.